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Omitting should be an accessible approach, Steven. "Show, don't tell is a technique often employed in various kinds of texts to enable the reader to experience the story through action, words, tho...
I don't know how much benefit you'll get on a resume from having read about, as opposed to used, DITA, but some knowledge is better than none. DITA is both a specific framework and an approach. M...
I'm planning a novel where the protagonist is an author and regularly writes short stories and shares them with other characters. I see this as a great opportunity to break out of the narrative an...
There are two basic applications of this technique: serious and comedic. In the serious version, your character changes opinion about given passage while writing it. It tells about character devel...
I'm writing a novel, my first ever, and I hope to finally finish the story and get it published. I live in Mexico, but I am writing in English...could I get the book published here, or would I have...
Instead of wasting your time trying to understand how much you can take from other works and get away with it, you might want to rather invest that time into coming up with your own ideas and flesh...
The most important thing you need to establish is a consistency of approach. Decide on a way to introduce a voice, reinforce it a couple of times and then get on with writing. The important part he...
As a writer, it is difficult to help your readers hold two dissonant ideas in their heads. This can occur when the situation you are describing does not match well with the lived experience of your...
I think everything is doable, if the reader gets the feeling it is fitting. I see no problem in the approach to have the book in first person and switch to third for the finale.
The published research is usually the other way around, that is "who reads what?", not "what is read by whom?". The best researched group of readers is children and adolescents. Results are usually...
In replying to this question I thought this would make a good question... This entire site is devoted to giving people advice on their writing, there are a near infinite number of books and magaz...
One of the first things you should consider is whether or not you are going to have to pay anything to this local printer in order to get your book "published". If so, then you may want to consider...
Can an overdone theme still work? Absolutely You have the right idea. You generally want to stay away from overdone themes, because they are, well, overdone. But if you do write a novel wit...
If you are planning on moving linearly through 2 points on the timeline, I'd call it "parallel plotting" or similar. But I don't recall anyone in grad school officially naming this kind of approach.
A longer post can work on a blog that usually tends toward shorter posts if you take some care in structuring it. "Here are 20,000 words, plus equations" may send some people to the "back" button ...
Difficult concept and varies with style guide. In general, 1) It Is appropriate to capitalize the first word of a full sentence within a quote (motto s have different rules). 2) All versions of T...
My advice here would be: don't think in terms of "right" and "wrong"; think in terms of structural arcs. You need to figure out what options for arcs you have, and which of those you actually want ...
A while ago, I would casually read and and casually write, and I was satisfied with what I achieved. But that all changed when people started suggesting that "readers are better writers" and the l...
This my most serious writing endeavor ever. I've gotten much farther than I've dreamed of getting. So far, I've been chugging along writing everything in the order that I imagine it being written i...
I'm about to start a new story, and I feel it would be better if I started in media res. (aka at some point in the middle.) I know this is a fairly common style used to hook readers into the story ...
I currently have the prospect of writing a considerable amount of technical documentation (describing interactions with an extremely complex online service). I consider myself a reasonably proficie...
I'm currently writing a story about a girl who was found by a couple in a magical isolated town, where everyone is named by the leader. I want her to not have a name because of two reasons: She d...
First of all, I think that there is no definitive answer to a question like this. Stories are different, and a mechanism that worked fine in one story might fail in another. You will have to try ou...
The best approach is to query the agent first and ask them what their preference is. It is unlikely that they all have the same policy. Asking them first shows them that you are aware of the issue ...
Background Info: My main character starts out the story with kind of a sad back story, it's not in a tragic way, just the normal kind of misfortune; losing family members, having to drop out of col...
